Static vs. Instantiated Objects in PHP

[Mark Baldwin <mark.baldwin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings all,

Does anyone know how static objects work behind the scenes in PHP5?  
More specifically, is there a benefit to declaring an object and its  
methods as static vs the more traditional OO way of instantiating an  
object and then calling methods through the -> operator?

For example if I have:

class Example {
	public static function doSomething() {
		/* doing something here */
	}
}

and

class Example {

	private __construct() {
		/* constructing here */
	}	

	public function doSomething() {
		/* doing something here */
	}

}

Is it more/less/equally efficient for the engine and parser to do:
$result = Example::doSomething();

or

$example = new Example();
$result = $example->doSomething();

Thanks in advance,
Mark

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