Not sold to me.

Not pirated by me.

Not wanted by me.

I think PC_Tool has got it right. The first question I ask friends who are purchasing a computer is:"What are you going to do with it". I know jokers who buy a $4000 computer to surf and do e-mail. As far as Vista sales are concerned; who cares. I doubt if Bill and Steve are going to give me a cut. I have frontal lobe brain damage and suffer from various types of seizures and I'm going to get all upset about what OS I'm using? Not bloody likely.

40 millions might sound a lot, but compare it to how many XPs are around...

After how many years, and time before it was actually sold?

Vista is doing well for only being on the market for the short amount of time its been. As long as they sold the product, it costs as a sale, and companies like HP don't purchase products that they are not going to sale.

So granted it might take a month to sell 100,000 units, it still counts that customers are buying the product, and a company like HP is a customer.

Somebody mention something about stock for companies like HP, you do understand they use dnt use physical copies right?

39 million OEM and 1 million off-the-shelf?

Also have to wonder how many of the OEM sales are in use, as cranbers suggested.

Unless I'm the only person to have bought Vista separate from my computer purchase, I think your numbers are off. ;)

Exactly. That should rather read "39 million copies of Vista forced on hapless victims which were buying a new PC and didn't have any coice, and 1 million sold off-the-shelf."

Also, I bet that by far not all Oem copies are used - perhaps half. When I bought XP64, I got a Vista coupon with it, but didn't order the crap. Yet I'm sure they counted it as a Vista sale.

What I don't understand is how you can buy a $400 computer and Vista is on it yet if you go to the store it's $300 or $400 just for Vista. I understands that OEM's get a discount but come on, that is ridiculous.

I bought it. Newegg OEM of Ultimate64. It's collecting dust as I wait for Intel to get off their collective asses and finish their RAID driver.

Well technically Microsoft probably did sell that many copies. But you have to look at that fact those are probably not in use. It's no different than Amd or Intel or Nvidia saying they sold 5 million of their products in a given amount of time. That includes those products sitting in wearhouses at newegg.com or bestbuy or wherever. There are what did Ballmer quote 33k windows distributors/stores out there?

Now add in the fact that Dell, HP, Toshiba and all the other OEM's out there buy in bulk, big 10 foot high pallets at a time of these windows oem bundles to put on each computer.

So just imagine how many are sitting there, while yes microsoft got paid for them, but technically they are not being used yet. I would say the number is closer to 10-12 million copies actually being used, with the rest ready to be bought and "INVENTORIES" need to be emptied.

dang, 40 mil. that's a lot more than I expected. Good for them. However, I think they got "pirated" by at least 10 mils.

very true, 40 million sold, 5-10 million pirated :P ...not bad for an new OS.

I see lots of Vista machines around town in Starbucks, etc so believe the numbers are accurate. However I wonder how the percentages break down into copies sold off shelves, copies pre-sold as an XP upgrade, and copies sold as OEM on new PCs.

I'll upgrade my XP Media Center to Home Premium sometime this year, but I am in no hurry. Probably wait for the Media Center changes to land in SP1.

If XP MCE is working for you now, I really wouldn't mess with it if that's all you use it for.

Wait until you buy a new system.

The enhancements to MCE over XP are actually quite minimal for a basic HTPC.

Almost wish they'd stripped the "MCE" version of Vista of damn near everything but MCE. The rest, when it's only used for that purpose, is damn near useless.

Not sure what you mean: "Almost wish they'd stripped the "MCE" version of Vista of damn near everything but MCE. The rest, when it's only used for that purpose, is damn near useless."

My MCE machine is used for both MC functions (watching TV, DVR, Music, Photo slideshows) and tradition PC functions. (email, browsing, etc..)

Reading comprehension not your strong suit?

I put this in there;

when it's only used for that purpose,

for that reason specifically. If you use it for both, *great*. If not, you've got a lot of completely useless BS going on in the background. They should have at least allowed us the option of installing a stripped down MCE if that was all we required.

bah, these numbers are extremely padded by huge swaths of licenses gobbled up by the major PC builders.

lmao...

SO?

Just compare them, then, to the huge number of licenses gobbled up by PC builders for other OSes...

Oh, wait....

"Premium editions of Vista account for 78 percent of sales, he added."

Could this be because everyone realizes Home Basic is pathetic.

Home Basic is pathetic.

In what way? The lack of eye-candy you all seem to whine about anyway?

What is it missing that XP Pro had?

Ah, yes Bill we believe everything you tell us.
NOT

Exactly.

...like that time he said that the Zune didnt flop... ROTFLMAO

Except their quarterly accounting reports will report this, so there would be no reason for Bill to lie. He would just have to eat his words and under accounting rules for public companies, something something I don't know might happen.

You're clueless. Let me guess, you believe everything Steve Jobs tells you?

As was mentioned below, Bill has no reason to lie...the annual sales report will show these numbers in plain english.

Deal with it, Vista is doing fairly well in terms of sales. (And I'm sure they surpassed the user base of OSX within a week or two of Vista's release...)

While 40 million copies of Vista of copies were sold, how many were sold to end-users (as opposed to distributors, stores, and system builders)? What percentage of that 40 million is still sitting on shelves somewhere?

When Microsoft (or any other company for that matter) throws numbers around, it's always a good idea to look at what those numbers really refer to...

Actually I think your a little clueless here. What he is talking about is how many have been sold to Distributors world wide. It does NOT reflect how many were actually sold to customers (in other words the actual pc users)

40 millions might sound a lot, but compare it to how many XPs are around...

40 million - translate it into 4.00 billion in revenue $ (AVg 100)

Wondering the potential of linux if it would be a paid s/w and the money would have gone into more and more R&D and marketing..