Some interesting facts about Vista and why the logo matters

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A mail came round with a few interesting facts about Vista - which I thought I'd share with you.

  • Sales fact 1:  Nearly 40 million Windows Vista licenses had been sold as of 100 days after its January launch. If my sums are right that's 400K per day 16,700 per hour, or about 4.5 per second. Making it the fastest-selling operating system in history.
  • Sales fact 2:  In our quarterly earnings call with Wall street we disclosed that the agreements we sign with major customers are growing rapidly and renewals are at historic highs. Vista (and office) are major contributors to this. That call also explains some of the accounting complexities when we release something that big.
  • Sales fact 3: Selling a license to business doesn't mean the OS is deployed; but Gartner and IDC are predicting that Windows Vista will be more widely adopted in businesses in its first 12 months than previous versions of Windows.
  • Reliability fact: In the first 90 days after release we had 21% fewer support calls than for the same period with Windows XP
  • Performance fact: Windows Vista machines with only 1GB RAM responded on average 15 sec's faster than similarly configured XP machines for common desktop workloads (Office, Adobe, Quicken, etc.).
  • Driver coverage fact: Today Windows Vista supports 1.9M devices (unique hardware ID's) up from 1.5M at launch. Less than 900 drivers are "missing" today (mostly scanners and older TV tuners) and we are tracking down to the level of devices that are used by as few as 500 people globally.
  • Compatibility fact: There are now more than 10,000 hardware and software products have earned either a Works with Windows Vista logo or a higher-performance Certified for Windows Vista logo.

On compatibility and drivers I was referred to this article by Joe Wilcox, titled, "Whoa, The Vista Logo Does Matter." When I was looking for a TV tuner I checked Vista hardware compatibility list - the Hauppauge Device -which Joe rejected was there and available on special offer in PC world. I had to download the driver but as I've said before it's great with Vista Media Centre. Hardware vendors should take note: not having the drivers in the box and not displaying the logo will cost you sales.