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Microsoft sold more than 200 million Windows 8 and 8.1 licenses during the controversial OS's first 15 months, Tami Reller, the company's executive VP of marketing, revealed Thursday at a Goldman Sachs technology conference.Sounds impressive, right? Not exactly.Sure, 200 million is a big number -- that's about one license for every 35 people on the planet, a level of ubiquity most companies would kill for. But Microsoft isn't most companies. Put into historical or aspirational context, Windows 8 and 8.1 have underwhelmed.Not convinced? Here are five reasons not to be impressed.1. Windows 8 sales can't keep pace with Windows 7's precedent.In...

With just a week left in the month, Windows 8’s usage uptake has slipped behind Vista’s at the same point in its release, data from a Web measurement company showed. According to Net Applications, Windows 8’s online usage share through Dec. 22 was 1.6% of all Windows PCs, an uptick from 1.2% of November. Windows 8 publicly launched on Oct. 26. At the same two-month mark in Vista’s release timetable, that OS accounted for 2.2% of all Windows systems, double the month prior. … The slowdown in uptake of Windows 8 and its poor performance compared to Vista is a...

For an operating system that took five years to create, Windows Vista’s reputation went down in flames amazingly quickly. Not since Microsoft Bob has anything from the software giant drawn so much contempt and derision. Not every company lives to see the day when its customers beg, plead and sign petitions to bring back the previous version of its flagship product. One thing’s for sure: it won’t take Microsoft five years to produce the next Windows. The company wants to put Vista behind it as soon as possible. In fact, the next version of Windows is almost here already. It’s...

Click on link to upgrade to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (x86). A 64 bit version is also available.

Bowing to pressure from customers and computer makers, Microsoft plans to keep Windows XP around a little longer. Large PC manufacturers were slated to have to stop selling XP after January 31. However, they have successfully lobbied Microsoft to allow them to continue selling PCs with all flavors of Windows XP preloaded until June 30, a further five months. Microsoft also plans to keep XP on retail shelves longer and will allow computer makers in emerging markets to build machines with Windows XP Starter Edition until June 2010. The move indicates the continued demand for the older operating system, some...

While Vista was originally touted by Microsoft as the operating system savior we've all been waiting for, it has turned out to be one of the biggest blunders in technology. With a host of issues that are inexcusable and features that are taken from the Mac OS X and Linux playbook, Microsoft has once again lost sight of what we really want. As we're more than aware, Vista Ultimate comes at a premium. For an additional $160 over the Premium SKU price, Ultimate gives you a complete backup and restore option, BitLocker Drive encryption, the ever so popular Windows Fax...

September 11, 2007 Running the numbers on Vista Ina Fried, for News.com Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report. Standalone unit sales of Vista at U.S. retail stores were down 59.7 percent compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down, but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5 percent. The findings largely mirror the sales pattern NPD saw for Vista during its first week on...

The year is 1993, and I'm at the Spencer Katt party at Fall Comdex, back when Comdex was "the" technology show of technology shows. There, I, a freelance technology journalist, meet Jim Louderback, then the director of PC Weeks Labs. We end up talking about operating systems. He rather liked Windows for Workgroups for the desktop; I sang the praises of SCO Open Desktop 2.0. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, even though we completely disagree about operating systems. Now, almost 15 years later, Jim and I are still friends. I'm now editor at large for Ziff Davis...

My 1 gigahertz, 512 Ram Toshiba Satellite notebook was finally bogging down on me after several years of excellent service. It was time for a laptop with more oomph. I compared prices and reviews of all the state of the art computers and decided that I would stick with Toshiba and buy a Core Duo with lots of ram, big hard drive, blazing speed, etc. Windows Vista had been out for six months, and I really had not been aware of some of its idiosyncrasies. Within an hour of powering up the new Tecra, I knew I was going to...

Not that you'd know it from Microsoft's results, or projected revenue, but the giant launched a brand-spanking new version of Windows this year. Not only did Windows Vista - billed by Microsoft as its biggest operating system for 10 years - fail to distinguish Microsoft's latest fiscal year from previous, non-Windows-Vista years, but Microsoft also missed its own expectations by several million dollars. The coming fiscal year looks little better. Microsoft told Wall St it's reconciled to the fact the seven-year-old Windows XP will occupy more of the client revenue mix than Microsoft would have preferred, while revenue for the...

So far, Transit has been using Vista Business full-time for a fortnight. And so far, we've found nothing that works better than in Windows XP, dozens of things that are annoyingly different without being a functional improvement, and several things that work at best intermittently and at worst not at all. On the whole, we wish we'd never moved. We should point out at the start that we migrated to Windows Vista under supposedly optimal circumstances. We waited for a few weeks before even thinking about it, so that we'd avoid any early release showstopper bugs. We purchased a machine...

I just bought a new Dell Laptop, I'm not able to access any of the song links to my own webserver, or anyone elses... Can Anyone help me?

Vista is 'more secure' says Gates Vista features Windows Vista is "dramatically more secure than any other operating system released", Microsoft founder Bill Gates has told BBC News.Mr Gates said the security features in the new operating system were reason enough to upgrade from Windows XP. Microsoft launched Vista in London, with more than 100m computers predicted to be using it within 12 months. Mr Gates also defended the pricing of Vista, which is twice as expensive in Europe compared to the US. The technology leader called the launch a "big day" that would bring a new digital workstyle...

CNET editors' review Rating: Very good 7.8 out of 10 The good: Windows Vista Ultimate does improve some features within Windows XP; fewer system crashes than Windows XP; Windows Vista offers better built-in support options. The bad: Windows Vista Ultimate does not put Search on the desktop (it's buried within applications, within the Start Menu); optimized only for the Microsoft Windows ecosystem (for example, RSS feeds from Internet Explorer 7 get preferential treatment); there's simply too much and not all of it is implemented properly; no new software yet written exclusively for Windows Vista; and there are too many editions...

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Rock guitarist Robert Fripp, famed founder of the 70's heavy metal group "King Crimson", was contracted by Microsoft to compose a new theme for the Vista operating system. The four second sound bite took 18 months to develop and record. (I still think their best was "Lark's Tongue in Aspic")

Excerpt - Well, so much for closing piracy loopholes! With Windows Vista and Office 2007 only just going Gold, and not even available to Microsoft beta testers, developers or volume licence subscribers, the first cracked versions have already hit the pirate boards. The Windows version which has been released is called Vista BillGates. It doesn?t feature any activation cracks itself, and the supplied product key is just for the installation. The activation crack is a separate download, and works by replacing the licensing components with components from beta builds. Then using a product key from Beta 1, Beta 2, RC1...

Excerpt - REDMOND, Wash.--Reversing a licensing change announced two weeks ago, Microsoft said on Thursday that it will not limit the number of times that retail customers can transfer their Windows Vista license to a different computer. On Oct. 16, Microsoft issued the new user license for Vista, including terms that would have limited the ability of those who buy a boxed copy of the operating system to transfer that license. Under the proposed terms, users could have made such a switch only one time. However, the new restriction prompted an outcry among hardware enthusiasts and others. Microsoft is returning...

Revisiting the Windows 98 days: Microsoft's Vista presentation goes awry It seems like Microsoft's operating system presentations have a tendency to go awry. In a live product demonstration for a large group of Wall Street analysts, the company decided to show off Windows Vista's speech recognition capabilities. As it turns out, the presentation, known as the Financial Analyst Meeting, was much more of a comedy rather than a professional demo. Earlier today, the video was available to watch from MSNBC's front page, but it seems to have completely vanished. Luckily, I was able to find a link here. It...

Excerpt - A security researcher with expertise in rootkits has created a working prototype of new technology that is capable of creating malware that remains "100 percent undetectable," even on Windows Vista x64 systems. Joanna Rutkowska, a stealth malware researcher at Singapore-based IT security firm COSEINC, says the new Blue Pill concept uses AMD's SVM/Pacifica virtualization technology to create an ultra-thin hypervisor that takes complete control of the underlying operating system. Rutkowska plans to discuss the idea and demonstrate a working prototype for Windows Vista x64 at the end at the SyScan Conference in Singapore on July 21 and at...