At 100 million Vista remains less popular than XP

Windows Vista has outdone Windows XP in terms of sales and it has already sold 100 million copies since its launch more than a year ago, said Microsoft boss, Bill Gates in his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show 2008.

100 million licenses is a huge number and it seems more significant when compared to Windows XP, which had managed to sell only 89 million copies in its first year but in point of fact Windows Vista is far less popular than XP was.

Windows XP had captured 69 per cent of the market an year after its launch while Windows Vista just has a hold on 39 per cent of the PC market.

First year sales of Vista have outdone those of XP by a mere 10 per cent when the PC market has expanded to almost double since XP’s release.

Net Applications Inc., a company which monitors traffic at approximately 40,000 Web sites, reported that for the first time Vista's share broke the 10 percent mark, to end the year at around 10.5 percent. While, Microsoft's Windows XP accounted for 76.9 percent and Apple's Mac OS X around 7.3 percent of the share during December.

Windows Vista was listed among the flops, in one of those year-end lists among other dud items like Zune, Amazon Unbox, Office 2007, Yahoo and even the iPhone. PC World actually named Vista as the biggest tech disappointment of 2007.

PC World cited various reasons for blasting Microsoft's Operating System among which they include the ‘user account control’ (UAC) -- one of the security features in Vista, allegedly aimed at giving users more control over their machine. In fact, it disappoints the users. When comparing, one realizes that Windows XP is faster, has no compatibility issues, works fine on weaker hardware and does not cost $399 and gives a thumbs down to Windows Vista.