A vaguely-related google search brought me this article from Microsoft, which is almost interesting (in a dry sort of press-release way) and has a couple of good statistics in it. I was quite frankly amazed at how many people don't ungroup taskbar icons in Windows 7/8.

Data collected through the Windows Feedback Program indicates that approximately 14% of desktop PCs and approximately 5% of laptop PCs have run with multiple monitors. It is important to note that this particular opt-in data set is enthusiast-leaning so represents the high end of usage (relative to previously shared measures that look at the entire universe of PCs), but we thought we would share this data set to reinforce another data source.

The numbers for 3 or 4 monitor setups are crazy small (0.8% and 0.3% respectively) and 13.5% using two monitors is lower than I would have thought, especially amongst enthusiasts!

What I found even more stunning was...

Hands-on research confirms the majority of users keep the default setting where windows are grouped by app on the taskbar. Telemetry that looked at hundreds of millions of sessions further confirmed that only 6% of users ungroup taskbar buttons.

SIX PERCENT? I'm part of that 6%, (and the 0.8% that use three monitors on my primary computer) and I can't see the appeal of grouped icons, I lose windows too often. Which do you use, and why?