It could be because leaked builds of Windows 7 were relatively easy to obtain, and therefore when Seven Forums was the same age as Eight Forums is now, more people were already using the new OS and had been for some time. On the other hand, although there have been a few leaks of Windows 8 these have been few and far between when compared to the same stage in development as Windows 7. It is only since the release of the official Betas (although they don't use that term), i.e. Development Preview and Consumer Preview, that this Forum has started to pick up. In addition, both Preview builds were made available to anyone to download from MS's server and they just kept a tally on the number of downloads.