In October, Windows 7 usage has for the first time surpassed Windows XP usage globally according to statistics from StatCounter. In other words, Windows 7 just became the most widely used desktop OS in the world.

This has been a long time coming. Windows XP has been at the top for eons (it launched 10 years ago, and once established, didn’t let go). Windows Vista never managed to threaten XP, so it wasn’t until Windows 7 came around that a shift really started to happen.

And that shift has happened fast. Windows 7 launched in October of 2009, then…

• Within three months, it overtook Mac OS X.
• Within 10 months, it overtook Windows Vista.
• Now, two years after its launch, it’s finally overtaken Windows XP.

This is probably some kind of record.

The chart above covers the entire life span of Windows 7 so far, counted from its official release date. According to Microsoft, they have already sold over 450 million Windows 7 licenses.

Windows XP is still a strong presence, but at least things are very much pointing in the right direction for Microsoft. They must be relieved. Microsoft surely didn’t expect XP to remain so dominant for so long. As for Windows Vista, it looks like it will die out before XP does in spite of being the newer OS.

You’ll see a close correlation between the combined decline of Vista and XP and the rise of Windows 7, which is to be expected. We’ve shown before that Windows 7 users upgrade from Windows XP and Vista, not from other operating systems. Windows eats Windows, OS cannibalism, so to speak. It’s mostly a natural consequence of Windows having such a dominant market presence.

Since the trend chart above isn’t ideal for showing the current situation in detail, here is a snapshot of the desktop operating system market share division as of October 2011, based on the first 10 days of the month:

It should be noted that these numbers are based on web usage (visitor stats to 3+ million sites), so it they won’t map exactly to the physical installed base. But these days, how common is it for PCs not to use the Web and the Internet? It’s also worth pointing out that it’s really the only “in use” metric to be had.

A funny little side note to end with: Over a year ago, we actually predicted that Windows 7 would overtake XP in November 2011. Ok, we were off by a month. So sue us…

Do you live in a country that loves Apple’s iPad? Most of us probably think we do, but we wanted to be able to tell you for sure. So even though we have written about the iPad many times before, it’s now time for us to tackle this hotly contested topic again.

Read on to find out, which countries are the most iPad-friendly.

Perhaps you live in one of them.

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Display resolutions are increasing every year, something that’s being taken to its extreme with the recent “retina display” trend that came with the latest iPad. The jump in onscreen pixels is massive, and such displays are soon bound to make their way into regular laptops and desktop displays, perhaps as soon as this year.

This development will have a profound effect on the size of the graphics resources necessary for websites, which ultimately will make websites bigger, more bloated and slower to download. That is, if we don’t change tactics.

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The juggernaut that is Facebook is quickly approaching 1 billion users, so the social network is growing at a rapid pace overall.

But if we look at some of the latest figures available, it would seem that Zuckerberg’s creation is not gaining users in every corner of the world.

In fact, in one country, Facebook has lost 16% of its users over the last six months, the equivalent of over 200,000 users. But in another country, Facebook has gained almost 17 million users over the same period.

What countries are we talking about, you ask? Read on and we’ll tell you.

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Developers who want a portable computer to code on, which is thin, light, sleek and yet powerful, may now be getting another option in an ultrabook from Dell. What makes the “Sputnik” ultrabook different is that it runs Ubuntu 12.04 Linux and it’s tailor-made for developers.

Every Friday we bring you a collection of links to places on the web that we find particularly newsworthy, interesting, entertaining, and topical. We try to focus on some particular area or topic each week, but in general we will cover Internet, web development, networking, performance, security, and other geeky topics.

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“Photograph what is close to you. Share it with the world!“ That’s one of the headlines on Aday.org, a global project that will attempt to document what goes around the world in one day.

This all takes place on Tuesday May 15, 2012, and Pingdom will be participating.

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