Microsoft CEO Ballmer says Windows 7 sales are double its predecessors'
By Laura June 
posted November 19th 2009 7:39PM
posted November 19th 2009 7:39PM
Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer was on hand for the company's annual shareholder's meeting in Washington, and news of Windows 7 sales came up right away. While delivering the opening remarks, Ballmer said that Microsoft has sold twice as many copies of Win 7 as any previous Microsoft OS in a comparable time frame. That's including both OEM sales and boxed retail copies, of course, and though no specific numbers were mentioned, the good news isn't completely unexpected as pre-orders were through the roof. High five, Microsoft.
WooHoo!
I love Win 7
So smart. They deployed Vista to ensure that everyone upgrades to Windows 7 after. MS did a great job securing their market!
ballmer is the man
@bob e
Agree 100%
After 12+ months of continued use, I find
very few things about it to dislike
Agreed about the font...
1996 called they want their fonts back
Times New Roman is u g l y
@bob e Ditto
@naz
I agree. I'm not a fan of Times New Roman. Reminds me too much of essays and reports I had to do for class.
@bob e
Seriously, who approved the serif font? What's this site trying to be? The New York Times for gadget geeks edition? Bring back my sans-serif!
@bob e
It seems like an awful lot of different fonts on one page. Plus the italics.
@bob e
you dont like reading serif? ever read a book? how about a a newspaper? news website? anything that actually matters? guess what font they use for copy? its SERIFS. if you knew anything about fonts you would know serifs are the easiest to read. hence why books and everything else written uses serifs.
@bob e
You are right, this site went from simple and nice to bloated and ugly. It also renders very different on Mac and PC, the PC version is totally screwed. Time to move on and find a better site.
@Kimleng Even the online edition of the New York Times uses a font that is more pleasant to read.
@extra2491
That is why I don't read books, I stand the serif font. It is more complicated to view and inefficient IMO
About time Windows 7 is better than Vista!!
@(Unverified) Indeed it is... and that's why the higher numbers should have been anticipated.
Microsoft is obviously going to have larger-than-expected sales for the release of a solid operating system following the relative failure that was Vista. This isn't just any ol' routing Windows upgrade... the floodgates holding back the XP users from migrating to a new OS have finally been thrown open, or at least, widened significantly.
Windows 7 was my idea, so your welcome Microsoft.
Windows Vista was my idea. Sorry everybody :(
@181 I wonder who'll 'take the blame' for Windows ME?
@Lazy Genius You almost deserve a downrank for that blatant grammar error.
@adelossa
That was me. Sorry folks.
Win7 is Awez0me
Er... Bob *wasn't* my idea... *runs*
@math0ne
The typeface is lovely.
didn't we all saw it coming?
what about WinMO
@daguila29
sorry for the bad grammar
@daguila29
Apparently on Pocketnow they have some info from a guy in the EU that saw it.
http://pocketnow.com/tech-news/windows-mobile-7-impressions-leaked-impressive
@daguila29
WinMo is dead.
its really because they are giving the students really cheap upgrades.... me and like 10 of my friends upgraded for 40 bucks each ......
@arsenal27
I upgraded to Windows 7 for 0.00 bucks.
thank you M$.
@AbbasJin
good for u
@AbbasJin
gotta love msdnaa
ya....and me for 5 bucks....that too for the DVD they have to burn
ballmer's gonna knock you out
"Not many people are going to upgrade to Windows 7" - Phil Schiller
Seems like an Apple CEO was wrong once again
@Jordan: Sorry, he's not a CEO, but still, you get my point
@Jordan ME personally, am not going to upgrade to windows 7, or right away at least, because the PC i have now is not worth a $100-300 upgrade. Might as well buy a new computer.
@Jordan I said nay to Windaz 7, I've used Windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP and I've had enough. I threw away my PC and got me a Mac.
@[Highest Ranked] Only people who brag lie. Bet you've never even owned a PC, silly fan boy.
@Alex xBeRx Sanchez: It's ok, let "Highest Ranked" have his fun. He's just upset because Apple charged him $30 dollars for, well nothing, where as Microsoft made a really good OS and decent upgrade with 7. He's all mad because he thought Apple was actually going to gain market share ground for once in its pitiful existence (in the computer arena), but yet here Microsoft comes in once again to save us all from the DRM, closed off ecosystem known as Macintosh.
@Jordan: Double of Vista isn't really saying much in the context of the installed base. Beyond Vista, the base wasn't as large as it is today. Furthermore, 7 isn't driving new PC sales, and the Fortune 500 have no plans to conduct company-wide upgrades. The bottom line is that HP, Dell and everyone else is going to look for non-Windows options to drive growth.
@cgpublic:
"Microsoft has sold twice as many copies of Win 7 as any previous Microsoft OS in a comparable time frame"
Did you read the article? They aren't just talking about Vista, they're talking about all versions of Windows.
@Jordan Good point lol
@Jordan: Yes, I did. Did you read mine? Beyond Vista, the installed base is larger than it was for XP and previous versions. So to say that it selling double is really not the point. The point is the rate of adoption for the installed base, and who is doing the upgrading. Let's see what the rate is in three to six months. That will tell the real story.
Beyond that, major corporations really don't get the ROI for 7, which is why they are not planning major roll-outs of new equipment bundled with 7. Windows and Office in their present incarnations are finished – if the next version of Windows can't offer the same speed and security of Chrome, what then?
Everyone won't rush out to implement Chrome, but they will take a long, hard look at which approach will be the direction for the future.
@[Highest Ranked]
Gotta give the "kid" some credit.......he's experimented
with allot of OS's for someone just entering Junior
High School
@cgpublic: They will take a look at Chrome, and realize the failure that is the could. The infrastructure to support entirely cloud based computing does not exist. If large quantities of people switch to cloud computing, America's Internet is gone. Networks would be bogged down. Add on how internet providers already want to put usage caps in place and cloud computing just becomes one jumbled mess.
To say that there were fewer users before Vista is completely ignorant. EVERYBODY knows that Vista was not adopted well, and not nearly as well as its predecessors. If Vista was not adopted well, this means that the user base for the previous version (I'll keep it simple and use one generation, so xp) was larger. This means that the adoption rate was larger than two generations ago.
I would love to know where you get your facts about major corporations not planning on implementing 7. To be honest, I would ask, why would they? But then I would ask the same question, why would they be looking for something else?
The fact is we're kind of at a plateau. Obviously corporations are cutting back right now, they don't want to spend the money on new hardware and software, including OS licenses. If the systems they have in place work, why replace them? But then they also wouldn't be looking for a different OS, such as Chrome as you suggested.
The same goes for home users. How much does a new computer really help the average user, performance wise. Sure they could get that fancy dancy new quad-core, but when all they do is the occasional word document, email checking, and internet surfing, does it really matter? The answer is no.
Now taking those two facts into account, the fact that Windows 7 adoption rate is double all of its predecessors is quite staggering. Sure, it may not be driving hardware sales, but didn't people always hate on Microsoft saying they were just trying to drive sales of hardware and help their buddies? Once that one of the biggest complaints of Vista was that you needed new hardware? Here we are having them NOT drive sales and you're complaining. I think it's a good thing. People are finally starting to realize that they don't need a slightly faster processor, the one they have is completely adequate, and hey, it runs Windows 7 - and runs it quite well.
@Jordan: Sorry to burst your bubble, but you wrong, just as Ballmer is wrong. Here's the word from Computerworld:
"I would call it pretty good," Baker said, "but I wouldn't call it great." Baker said that expectations for Windows 7 were even higher than its actual performance, but the tough economy and retailers' reluctance to give up on either Windows XP or Vista created what he called a "headwind" for Microsoft's new operating system. While unit sales of Windows 7 were up dramatically over Vista's early numbers, the new operating system brought in a less-than-stellar 82% revenue increase over Vista. While retail copies did well, PC sales were less impressive. They were higher than any week during the high-volume third quarter, when back-to-school sales dominated, but they weren't as strong as the uptick during Vista's launch, Baker said.
Windows 7. Less than Vista. Fact.
"
@Jordan: I have so many ways to show you how incorrect you are, but it's not worth my time.
Let's just say, Walt Mossberg - one of the most anti-microsoft pro apple people on the planet, said himself "Windows 7 is the best desktop OS I've ever used". Look it up. You got one review from computerworld. One review means nothing. Look at every other review, and the storms of people going to Windows 7, and you will see how very wrong you are.
Must... Get... 7...
I'm still rocking XP (downgraded from Vista)
@Aguiluz
Its not 2001 anymore....get with the times.
@Aguiluz dont youy mean UPgraded?