Microsoft has stated that they have sold over 88 million copies of Windows Vista, their latest operating system across the world. In addition to the 88 million copies sold, Microsoft said that 42 million PCs now have Vista licenses via volume licensing contracts signed by corporate users. The software giant also highlighted a number of customer migrations which signifies that users are ready to switch to the OS, in spite of surveys that indicate that many people are taking a cautious approach. This announcement by Microsoft comes at a time when market experts have suggested that customers are avoiding the Vista operating system due to several performance and hardware compatibility related issues.
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Retail software sales are booming in the US, with Office, Vista and Creative Suite
A “perfect storm of new product releases in 2007″ have pushed up US retail software sales. Selling retail boxes of PC software has been a declining business, for obvious reasons, but the American market is up by almost 10% this year, on NPD figures. At eWeek, Joe Wilcox has blogged the numbers in PC Software’s Great Year. He says: The big sales driver: Office 2007, which is selling like gangbusters. When comparing Office 2007 sales to version 2003 during the same early sales period, unit sales of the newer productivity suite are about double the older one, according to NPD. “Office commands 17.4% of all PC software dollar volume, including PC games,” [Chris Swenson, NPD’s director of software industry analysis] said. “When people go to the store to buy software, there’s a good chance they’ll end up buying Microsoft Office.” The category with biggest year-over-year growth change and highest average selling price is operating systems. There, Windows Vista overwhelming leads the category, which is up nearly 50% from 2007. Vista’s sales pull is surprising considering lackluster sales comparisons to Windows XP. In dollar terms, Windows has 78.2%, Mac OS X 21.3% and Linux 0.5% of the US retail market this year to October. NPD says Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 is also a “huge success story,” as is Apple’s Final Cut Studio. Obviously it won’t last. There won’t be a similar string of big products released next year, though there will be a new Microsoft Office for Mac….
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Pick the Right Vista Version
Microsoft Vista isn’t a single product–the software giant has shipped a selection of five versions of its next-generation operating system. You can choose among the $199 Home Basic version; shell out $239 for the Home Premium edition; pay $299 for a Business edition; or spring for the Ultimate edition priced at $399. Microsoft also offers a version specifically tuned to 64-bit computer systems. Puzzled? Let’s get acquainted with those different versions. Start with Basics? Home Basic looks pretty affordable. Can I get by with that? If your hardware is up to snuff, spending the extra $60 to bypass Basic and jump to Home Premium is pretty appealing. Premium gives you Aero (and the very cool Flip 3D when you tab through your running applications while holding down the Windows key) plus Media Center. If your graphics hardware is too ancient to support Vista’s Aero interface, the rest of your system is probably going to bog down with Vista anyway. In that case, you might do well to stick with Windows XP SP2 or to install a memory-thrifty but secure Linux distribution such as Xubuntu. Or buy a new PC with Vista Home Premium preinstalled. Checking out Vista’s Many Flavors What does the Business version get you? Most significantly, it lets you log in to and access resources on a Windows Server domain (either in Windows Server 2003 or in the forthcoming Vista version of Windows Server), just as Windows XP Professional does. Like Windows XP Home Edition, the Home editions of Windows Vista lack support for domains. Again like XP Pro, Vista Business permits you to log in to and control your system remotely via the handy Remote Desktop tool: If you forget a file while you’re on a trip to Chicago, for example, Remote Desktop lets you connect to your office PC and copy or e-mail the file to your laptop. I have a tablet PC. Can I install Vista on it? Should I? Yes you can, if you buy a Vista version that offers tablet functionality: Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate. But before you do, check your hardware configuration against Vista’s requirements. Many tablet PCs are relatively underpowered and may not make very satisfactory Vista systems. Vista editions that do support tablets introduce some new pen-oriented features. You gain more control over where the Tablet Input Panel (TIP) writing area appears, the cursor changes shape to make what you’re doing clearer, and gestures called “Flicks” enable you to perform navigational tasks such as scrolling with a quick pen maneuver. What does the 64-bit version get you? Is there any reason not to run it on a capable PC? Like the 64-bit version of Windows XP, the 64-bit version of Windows Vista looks almost identical to the 32-bit version but allows you to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications, and to use more than 4GB of system memory. The 64-bit versions of data-intensive applications such as CAD, photo-, video-, and audio-editing tools may perform better than 32-bit versions on the same system. However, 64-bit Windows has some drawbacks, starting with the fact that it requires 64-bit drivers, which are sometimes hard to come by. In addition, the 64-bit version of a program typically requires more memory than the 32-bit version does. Eventually, we’ll probably all be using 64-bit operating systems (and then 128-bit, etc.). But for now, unless you need to run a 64-bit application, stick with 32-bit Windows. Do I have to buy a different disc for the 64-bit version?
Each retail version of Windows Vista will contain 32- and 64-bit forms of the OS.
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Windows Vista users given performance boost
Microsoft releases trio of Vista updates today. Windows Vista users will get a trio of performance and reliability updates in Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday downloads via Windows Update today. In a departure from the usual pre-Patch Tuesday secrecy, Microsoft disclosed the contents of the three non-security, high-priority updates that it promised last week would accompany a pair of bug fixes today. “As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, we use Windows Update to periodically deliver updates for Windows Vista,” said Nick White, a Microsoft programme manager, on the company’s Vista blog. “We do this so that customers need not wait for a service pack or another or larger release to benefit from the ongoing improvements we make to Windows.”
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