> Anecdotal, but in every place I've worked or been with people running Windows, most people run everything maximized and switch between applications.

Were their monitors small? That could be a contributing factor.

Maybe it is a personal preference, but I never liked fullscreen applications for anything - I'd only maximise if I was focused on one application's content, and it was large enough that scrolling would be reduced significantly if I did so. At any given time I probably have several other things running, and I like to see what the other apps are doing and/or refer to them. I'm also not really a fan of tabbed browsing, since I often compare and look at several pages simultaneously, and with only tabs, I would otherwise have to remember the previous page's contents as I switched between them.

For me it's usually applications with either lots of UI (Outlook, Visual Studio, Eclipse) or lots of content (browser, Far Manager, consoles) that are maximized. Although depending on how I use the latter they might as well be windowed if necessary. Two monitors help in not needing to window applications all the time just to see two of them at the same time, though. Sadly a third monitor doesn't work with the machine here :|