Windows 8’s user share surged last month, while Windows XP’s plummeted by a record amount, a metrics company said this weekend.

October’s statistics from Net Applications put the combined user share of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 at 16.8% of the world’s desktop and notebook systems, an increase of 4.5 percentage points from September. Last month’s climb was the largest in the operating system’s two-year history and almost equal to its best four-month increase.

Windows 8 accounted for 18.4% of the personal computers running Windows in October, a gain of 5 percentage points from the month before. The difference between the numbers for all personal computers and only those running Windows was due to the fact that Windows powered 91.5% of all personal computers in October, not 100%.

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