14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Vista has sold 40 million licenses since the operating system was initially introduced on January 30, 2007. Driven by excellent customer demand worldwide, Windows Vista outperformed Windows XP in terms of adoption by two to one. Vista managed to respect the forecasts initially outlined by Microsoft for its market performance. However, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates stated at the 2007 edition of Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC 2007) in Los Angeles that the reception of Windows Vista has been over the top.
"And now we can go back and talk about some of the success that was driven by the launch, talk about the Vista First 100 Days. We've really been amazed at the customer response. I mean, we knew that [Windows] Vista would become the standard version of Windows. We knew that the industry was stepping up to take advantage of those capabilities, but what's happened in the last 100 days has been beyond our expectations. As of last week, we've had nearly 40 million copies sold, and so that's twice as fast as the adoption of Windows XP, the last major release that we've had," Gates revealed during his time on stage at the conference.
Sure, Apple's Get a Mac video ads are funny, but they fail to make up for an operating system, immutably tied to a piece of Mac hardware that just doesn't sale and has failed to pick up to the levels of Windows, not to mention Windows Vista. And in this context, Vista has nothing but a clear road ahead, because Apple's upcoming operating system release, Mac OS X Leopard has been postponed until October 2007.
Bill Gates did not overlook this detail and took a swing at Apple, mocking the Cupertino-based company. Gates' trademark diplomacy and subtlety only emphasized the derisory tone. As a matter of fact, Gates even failed to mention the names of the competition. And why should he, when the rivals are anodyne?
"If you think about that, that says that in our first five weeks we've matched the entire installed base of any other provider of similar software. So just in five weeks we've gotten out to those levels. And the reaction has been very strong. We've got people who are talking about the ease of upgrade, the excitement around DreamScenes. We've got families who are using photo tagging, and organizing their information in new ways. We've had a good experience with the support issues, because of the way that we connect up the Web, and get the latest drivers, and the first 90 days ease of set up has actually been better than any version that we've got," Gates commented.