By now, nearly everyone can agree that Windows 7 is at the very least a marginal improvement over Windows Vista, so its success comes as no surprise. According to research by NPD Group, Microsoft sold 234% more boxed versions of Windows 7 than it did Vista during the first couple days of sales. The research firm's data covers sales from October 18 to 24 and includes Windows 7 presales.

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Since Microsoft never gives out 'real' numbers, just percentages and such... We can never really be sure what they consider 'sales'. Are these sales directly to the consumer? Are they the copies bought by retail distribution channels FOR sale? I genuinely believe 7 has sold more copies than Vista, but maybe MS drummed up tons of retailer support and they all bought tons of copies expecting the 'wave' of customers.. but they never sold them. Just thinking out loud.

And some of the more obvious possible answers as to why include: Windows 7 IS an improvement over Vista and the positive press it has received as a result has no doubt fueled more confident buyers; MS had special deals like selling Windows 7 upgrades for $30-$50 and offered free upgrades from Vista if purchased recently; and of course, people have been waiting a long time since many of them probably 'skipped' Vista and feel this upgrade is obligatory.

However, it is no surprise they've sold 234% more copies, even though we don't really know if Vista sold 30 copies on the first day and Windows 7 sold 70 copies or if we're talking about 300,000 vs 700,000. :-)

Also, something I find funny is the 234 number. Usually when I make up ridiculous numbers, I just roll my fingers over the number keys. It's awfully convenient that 2, 3 and 4 are consecutively placed. Again, just thinking out loud...

Yea its really no surprise because everyone knew it was going to be a pretty good OS, from all the reviews and first hand experiences of the beta. I wouldn't say I'm a fan of Microsoft by any means but i hope this sells really well and does really well if nothing more then so the dude in the Mac commercials can shut up...Even if i loved macs I'd be annoyed by those stupid commercials by now.

win 7 is what vista should have been, I really wish MS would offer a bigger discount for teh win7.

It's kinda funny, when you think about it. Microsoft made tons of money releasing a ho-hum problem plagued Vista, then is making even more money soon after by releasing a much better fixed version with none of the original problems. And their biggest selling point for Win7? It's way better than Vista! Pretty hilarious when you created your own bad guy to pitch against in the marketing of the new product.

As PUTALE said, Win7 is what Vista should have been. And it probably would have been, if Microsoft hadn't been in a hurry to get a product out to generate revenue.

its all about the better advertising

Consider that Vista arrived late 2006, XP in late 2001. That's 5 years (or just a bit more), which is the longest time Microsoft ever went between OS releases. So sure, it might have waited longer, but it was already very late to the game.

Not to mention that if it shipped Windows 7 without Vista, it wouldn't have been considered such a good OS. Sure, 7 is a lot better than Vista, but it's only thanks to Vista that stable Windows 7 drivers are available, that software is largely compatible, things that made Vista's launch such a failure.

Vista also allowed Microsoft to learn the lessons. It's hard to release a new product and make it perfect. Vista was very ambitious, late as a result, and not ready (IMO it was ready at SP1). But Microsoft didn't foresee netbooks, its DX10 API was untested as were many new features. Having Vista on the market allowed seeing how things are used, where users are having problems, and fixing that.

So yes, it would have been nice to have Windows 7 to begin with, but it was impossible, and it's not a result of any conspiracy on Microsoft's part.

It would be interesting if we could see the comparison between torrented copies of Vista vs 7... my guess is it would be a lot more than 234% :)

Real numbers would be of more interest.. but suffice to say the only way w7 could not improve on the disaster of vista would be to re-release Windows ME aka "More Errors".

as seen in the comments, posted by me, of a previous article here: http://www.techspot.com/news/31153-w...ing-vista.html

this was the revival MS planned all along. unable to keep up with apples inovation and "cool" factor MS had to do something to make the shareholders stay on board.

Regardless of their...interesting numbers, I think we all can agree that the launch and actual operation of the OS was/is much better received than Vista. Which begs the question;

"Hey Microsoft, did you learn anything?"

:P

It's no surprise as much as they patched vista it always felt heavy, cluttered and unfinished. I always felt some error was happening even tho nothing wrong was going on. Win 7 is a huge improvement from Vista and is finally bringing back love to Microsoft's OS and now you can stop buying macs....i mean right now lol

After the failure of vista, and the need to replace that 10ish year old operating system, it had no other way to be.

I like how this article calls Windows 7 a, "marginal improvement over Windows Vista" when it's more than just a "marginal improvement". Windows 7 is more than just Vista done right, it's probably the best operating system Microsoft have released.

Let's look at the pluses here:

1. It runs extremely well on outdated hardware. When I say outdated, I mean 5 year old machines run Windows 7 with ease, without the fancy graphics of course. It runs on an Aspire One with satisfactory performance.

2. Reading and writing to hard disks and usb drives has been optimised. Windows XP, and especially Windows Vista suffered from slow file copying even on really high RPM and expensive hard drives. It's still not great, but it's a massive improvement.

3. Networking is WAY easier. It's easy to get Windows 7 networked with Windows Vista and Windows XP, no messing around required.

4. Backwards compatibility with Windows XP virtualisation.

There are far more optimisations, features and tweaks that make Windows 7 more than it would have been if Vista were done right the first time. They actually listened to Beta Tester feedback this time around as well, something they should have done a long time ago.

2009 has seen Microsoft starting to hit some wins. Bing market share, successful Windows 7 launch and people starting to realise that Apple is just as monopolistic if not more than Microsoft are nowadays with it faulted policies and patent fetishes.

I just upgraded from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate and I have to say that the process couldn't have been easier...nor could it have been any more pleasant. Microsoft definately had this OS release done right this time.

Pretty big jump, but it only reflects retail sales of Windows which I would assume is just a small percentage of total Windows sales. We need to get some numbers on corporate sales and computers shipped to Win 7 pre-installed to get the real picture of how sales are going. Plus raw numbers instead of percentages would be much use interesting.

Not surpriseingly, maybe microsoft's mistake might be profitable.

Very , very nice. Way better start the Vista . But still if microsoft lowered the price , it would make more sense to buy .

I think Windows 98se could crush Vista at this point.I liked Vista But W7 is the best! If you can?... go W7!

The article actually says 'at least a marginal improvement'.

It does nothing to actually quantify the improvements made itself . Rather, it infers that there are other people who think it is only a marginal improvement. And those people certainly do exist.