Windows 7 software unit sales in the U.S. were 234 percent higher than Vista’s first few days of sales. A combination of early discounts on pre-sales and a lack of promotional activity for the Ultimate version resulted in dollar sales that were 82 percent higher than Vista.

"Microsoft’s program of early low-cost pre-sales, high visibility marketing, and aggressive deals helped make the Windows 7 software launch successful," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD.

"In a slow environment for packaged software Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles."

While boxed software sales were up compared to the Vista launch, PC hardware sales ran into more of a challenge. PC sales growth was higher than any week during the high volume back-to-school third quarter, but wasn’t as strong as growth during the Vista launch.

PC sales growth during the Vista launch was stronger, increasing 68 percent over the prior year’s sales and 170 percent over the week preceding the launch. Windows PC sales were down 6 percent compared to PC sales during the Vista launch week.

"A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season," said Baker. 

"Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October.  The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating sales during Vista’s launch week."

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Actually, January 30th, 2008 was the first deadline XP faced.  One extension occurred, and then perhaps thanks to the 200,000 signatures collected by the "Save XP" drive, a planned June 30th cutoff was disregarded, as well.

Now, Nilay Patel reports, "Vendors will still have to place their orders before the official cutoff date of January 31, but they won’t have to take delivery (or pay, we’d imagine) until May.  All of this is supposed to alleviate the problem of vendors stockpiling copies of XP — it wouldn’t be good for Microsoft if manufacturers start charging a demand-related premium for XP licenses after Redmond goes Vista-only."

And Vista’s unpopularity is almost certainly one reason behind Microsoft’s move.  All sorts of companies and organizations have failed to embrace the operating system, even as many individuals continue to regard it with suspicion (see Microsoft’s own Mojave ad campaign).

Growth in the netbook sector may be to thank or blame (depending on one’s point of view), as well, since most of those machines aren’t even capable of running Vista.

Bookies are probably taking bets as to whether another extension will keep XP around until Windows 7 is released.

Let’s talk about in-use operating systems first.  According to Steam’s latest monthly hardware survey, XP dominates.  Its market share, though down a bit since October, remains more than twice the size of what Vista has captured.  And PC-imposed restrictions appear to have little to do with the state of things, as dual- and quad-core machines were common in Steam’s sample.

 Steam Hardware Survey Results

If Microsoft doesn’t manage to make Windows 7 something special, the company appears ready to encounter a rather serious problem.

Then there’s the matter of searches for game consoles.  Microsoft’s doing a bit better in this regard – Hitwise says its Xbox 360 ranks third with a share of 15.6 percent.  Sony sweeps up the next four spots with the Playstation 3, PSP, PSP 3000, and Playstation 2.

But the real winner is Nintendo, with the Wii and DS Lite grabbing market shares of 36.7 and 26.4 percent, respectively.  And sure enough, if you do some early-morning shopping, these products are what most of the rabid customers will be after, too.

Perhaps people don’t dislike Vista; they just don’t know it well enough, Richard Francis, the general manager of Microsoft Asia Pacific’s Windows Client Group, seemed to imply.  He told Ross O. Storey, "Windows Vista satisfaction is actually increasing over time — research tells us customer satisfaction levels increase among those who bought Windows Vista during just the last six months.  This data also shows that favourability increases as people become more familiar with it."

 

Francis then continued, "We are also on track to a faster rate of deployment in the enterprise compared to past releases including Windows XP and Windows 2000 during the same timeframe."

Still, "you get used to it" isn’t the sort of slogan that any marketer would suggest, and there’s a potential problem with the deployment statistics.  Francis stated that only 100 million or so Vista users have hit Microsoft Update, while closer to 180 million Vista licenses have been sold.  So either Vista users are so far from being tech savvy that 44 percent of them don’t follow simple update protocols (and probably don’t have a clue about OS alternatives), or a lot are reverting to XP.

It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft changes its tune when the release of Windows 7 draws closer.

I have not seen a Taiwanese equivalent to the ACSI, but it is pretty evident that some people in Taiwan aren’t real fond of Vista either.

In fact, the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s practices.

The investigation was sparked by complaints from the Taiwanese Consumer Foundation about Microsoft using a monopoly to make people buy Vista.

It is no secret that Vista is not the most popular version of Windows to date. Reports circulating today are even suggesting that a third of Vista users are abandoning it to go back to XP.

Something tells me that Microsoft will be taking a much harder look at Windows 7 (the next version of the operating system) than it did at Vista before unleashing it on the world.

With as much controversy as Vista has sparked, I’d be surprised if the new one didn’t bear more resemblance to XP. If that is the case, you can count on plenty more "why not just leave XP alone" discussions online and off.

On the other hand, you can expect that either way.

ComputerWorld reports that there are 2,000 developers and 25 "feature teams" working on Windows 7. Let’s just hope that strength rather than bedlam is really in numbers.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were onstage at the D: All Things Digital conference, so the 2009 date will hopefully remain firm.  It’s in line with various hints and tidbits that have been dropped before.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
 

As for the multi-touch interface, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of program management for the Windows Experience, confirmed that it’s built throughout the Windows 7 operating system, and not a more limited gimmick.

Microsoft’s team did leave itself an out on this issue – "[p]lease note, the applications you will see are for demonstration purposes only," Chris Flores wrote on the Windows Vista Team Blog – but a video demonstration shows off some appealing (and Apple-like) ideas.

Although Vista customers may start to feel cheated as a result of all this news, other consumers will likely be encouraged.  Just remember not to get so caught up in Windows 7 research that you run your current computer into the ground.

Vista isn’t finished yet. That’s not another hack writer’s opinion, but an assessment of the operating system from the man who runs the company. Steve Ballmer made an admission about Vista that, in the wake of internal emails at Microsoft criticizing the product, really serves as a footnote to the kerfuffle.

Ballmer’s blunt commentary occurred at an event for the company’s Most Valuable Professionals in Seattle. In a transcript of his remarks, he made this observation about the beleaguered Vista:

Windows Vista, a work in progress. (Applause.) Seriously, a very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. And we just sort of kiss that stone and move on, because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting, we can never let that happen again. We had some things that we can’t just set the dial back that I think people wish we could.

Vista is bigger than XP, it’s going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn’t get bigger still, and that the performance, and the battery and the compatibility we’re driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve.

Kissing the stone refers to the legendary Blarney Stone, reputed to give the gift of eloquence to the kisser. We’re not sure what eloquence has to do with Vista’s driver incompatibilities, but to cite the immortal movie Animal House, forget it, he’s rolling.

As we noted earlier, no one with a history of following Microsoft through the years will be surprised for a picosecond that Vista arrived not ready for prime time. Microsoft’s need for three releases to bring software up to speed is legendary.

One need go back no farther than the browser wars of the early days of the Web. With Netscape winning that category, Microsoft released its free-forever Internet Explorer version 1. Awful. Version 2. Less awful. Version 3.02 came along, and Microsoft pulled even with Netscape.

The big difference with Vista is people paid actual money for the OS, whether as a standalone installation or as an OEM license with a new PC purchase. Enough people have been unhappy about Vista to get noticed, especially the Microsoft insiders like Steven Sinofsky, to make Vista look like a bad proposition for PC users right now.

Even Ballmer thinks it has issues.

 Neil MacDonald

"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," stated Michael A. Silver and Neil MacDonald at a recent conference.  "Windows as we know it must be replaced."  The next version of Windows is already being discussed, of course, but its release is probably two or more years away.

In the meantime, Microsoft’s stuck.  Adoption of Vista has, from any sane point of view, lingered somewhere between "embarrassing" and "terrible."  Numerous pushes to keep XP alive haven’t made the situation any better. 

Gregg Keizer reports that the Gartner analysts explained, "Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile."

For any company with at least a partial alternative to Vista, the analysts’ report is great news.  For Microsoft, it should be a serious sign that budgets, teams, and even ways of thinking need to be changed.

Microsoft cleared up an annoying issue that vexed some of its Windows Vista users. When those unfortunates attempted to install a prerequisite, the Servicing Stack Update, their machines began the reboot cycle noted previously.

At the Microsoft Update Product Team blog, the group enlightened everyone with an assessment of why this looping behavior took place:

So what caused the problem? Well, the SSU has special code to check whether there are any pending reboots or other updates to install. If it sees either of these circumstances, it prevents the install from starting. During our investigation, we discovered that there were a few unknown and rare events during the middle of the installation of the update that could cause the update to think it needed a reboot to complete the installation.

An update for the SSU will stop this annoying little behavior from happening for Vista customers, to allow them to proceed with the Vista SP1 installation via Windows Update. Vista users who opt for the standalone download of Vista SP1 will avoid the whole SSU prerequisite check entirely.

The disclosure comes as Microsoft moved to try and bring an end to the availability of the XP operating system as an option for PC buyers. Vista’s heftier than disclosed hardware requirements and assorted driver issues that affected even highly placed Microsoft executives compelled people to choose XP.

That doesn’t help Microsoft’s profitability, but at the same time the company’s own internal admissions of problems with Vista didn’t help anyone, including themselves. If Vista is a couple of service packs away from being a stable, viable OS, Microsoft should not stop XP sales until then.

White and Microsoft seem to be parting on good terms, at least, judging from his last blog post.  Its tone is friendly enough, and the fact that White wanted to write it and Microsoft allowed him to speaks for itself.

Still, the details of his departure are a little odd.  Some Slashdot commenters have chalked the move up to the pressure or guilt associated with pushing Vista; White’s new employer, BuzzCorps, has a barebones website that certainly doesn’t hint at any way in which it could offer more money or prestige than Microsoft.  Its "HP Enthusiast" forum is home to just 223 users, 306 threads, and 330 posts.

Meh.  In any event, White is indeed moving on to what Paul McDougall has termed a "blog-centric marketing and public relations firm."

Christopher Flores, a director on the Windows Communications team, will take over the Windows Vista Team Blog.  And White will join the list of CEOs, general managers, and CIOs who have moved cardboard boxes full of office supplies in the recent past.