Microsoft claims that 180 million Vista licenses has been sold since the operating system’s launch in January 2007, but the critics are doubtful whether the demand for Vista is increasing, or it’s stable or even decreasing.

According to the report, Microsoft said, it sold 20 million copies in the first month, 40 million copies in its first 100 days and 60 million in 6 months. But these numbers include Express Upgrade Sales for Vista, under which customers were given free upgrade option from Windows XP operating system.

Microsoft rarely gives out sales numbers, but it seems that the company just wants to create a healthy picture of Vista in the minds of consumers, after recent criticism about the software…

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has a unique sales pitch for the company’s Windows Vista operating system — if you don’t like it, you can turn it into Windows XP.

Referring to Microsoft licensing policies that allow customers who purchase an operating system to legally install predecessor versions on their PCs, Ballmer noted that the program allows customers who aren’t satisfied with Vista to use XP.

“Customers get both,” said Ballmer, during a brief interview at an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Ballmer was responding to a question about whether Microsoft would extend Window’s XP’s shelf life beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration for the broader PC market. The company earlier this week said it would give XP a reprieve for installations on ultra-low cost desktops.

Ballmer implied that an extension for mainstream PCs isn’t in the cards because customers who want XP past June 30 can simply purchase Vista and exercise the downgrade option. “I don’t know how you can do better than getting both,” he said…

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Microsoft’s Windows Vista is 37% more secure than its Windows XP ancestor, a security vendor claimed today, a rate it hinted was disappointing.

Using different data collection techniques, Microsoft has recently asserted that Vista is 60% more secure than XP.

For every 1,000 machines running Vista, security company PC Tools counted 639 unique threats over a six-month period, said Michael Greene, the firm’s vice president of product strategy, on Friday. “A threat is actually when malicious code has penetrated the machine,” Greene said. “The malware has to be on the machine to be counted by our ThreatFire community.”

Vista’s number is lower than the one for Windows XP. Users of PC Tool’s ThreatFire behavioral-based anti-malware software who run the nearly seven-year-old XP reported 1,021 unique threats per 1,000 machines in the same six-month period…

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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.

In response to a question about Windows Vista, Gates, speaking before the Inter-American Development Bank here, said: “Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version.” Referring to Windows 7, the code name for the next full release of Windows client software, Gates said: “I’m super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways.”

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In a decision that highlights Windows Vista’s hefty system requirements, Microsoft said Thursday that it would allow computer makers to continue to sell the older Windows XP operating system on “ultra low-cost PCs” for an extended period.

Microsoft said it would allow system vendors to preload the Home edition of Windows XP on ULCPCs through June 2010, or one year after the next version of Windows becomes generally available.

Microsoft defines ULCPCs as, among other things, systems that use discount-line processors and lack a separate graphics card. An example of such as system is the Asus Eee PC, which runs Windows XP or Linux and sells for less than $400.

Such low-spec machines would be incapable of running Vista…

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Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday posted a major package of updates and security fixes for Windows Vista.

The world’s largest software maker said “Service Pack 1″ will improve Vista’s reliability, security and performance, though many components already have been released during monthly updates since the operating system went on sale just over a year ago.

Industry analysts offered mixed reports on whether the updates make their Vista experience better.

Michael Cherry, of the research group Directions on Microsoft, said the time it took to copy files over a network “returned to normal” with SP1 — meaning the operation felt as speedy as it did using Windows XP, Vista’s predecessor.

But he said one thing SP1 didn’t fix was his ability to wake his PC from sleep mode, which he described as “a hit or miss affair.”

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In an effort to get consumers to upgrade their older computers to its newest operating system, Microsoft said Friday that it plans to cut the prices of packaged versions of Windows Vista by as much as nearly 50% in some countries.

Effective with release of the boxed edition of Vista Service Pack 1, expected to be available at stores within the next several weeks, the price for a full, retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate in the U.S. has been reduced 20% to $320 from $400. The upgrade version of Ultimate has been cut to $220 from $260. The full version of Vista Home Premium falls 19% to $130 from $160, according to Microsoft.

Computer users in Europe and emerging markets will see even bigger price cuts. In the U.K., the price for the full version of Vista Home Premium drops 44% to 131.92 pounds from 233.60 pounds. The list price for Home Premium in South Africa will fall 41% to about Rand 1700.

Microsoft said Vista price cuts in emerging markets — where the company faces the most competition from open source software — will be as high as 48% in some countries…

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Microsoft has published a list of programs that will not work or that will suffer from reduced functionality after the installation of Vista Service Pack 1.

The list of programs consists mostly of security applications, such as Trend Micro Internet Security 2008. However, programs such as The New York Times Reader application also feature on the list. Users are advised to install updates from the application vendor to fix the problem.

“Windows Vista Service Pack 1 contains many security, reliability, and feature updates for Windows Vista,” the company said. “A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1.”

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Over the past few days I posted two sets of benchmarks comparing Windows Vista RTM with Vista SP1 (first post here, second here). These posts generated a lot of feedback, and from reading this feedback it’s clear that what many people are really interested in is not the performance differences between Vista RTM and Vista SP1, but between Vista SP1 and XP SP2.

A few days ago I posted in reply to several TalkBack comments that I wouldn’t carry out these tests until XP SP3 is released. There didn’t seem any point. That didn’t satisfy the crowds who wanted to see Vista SP1 and XP SP2 go head to head. So, to cut a long story short, the pestering continued and I eventually gave in. So what follows are the fruits of nearly two whole days of work at the PC Doc HQ (the test was hampered by the death of a motherboard, something which rendered hours of work obsolete).

How does Windows Vista SP1 compare to Windows XP SP2? Read on …

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It seems like it was a busy month at Microsoft’s headquarter and now the IT administrator will have some work to do. Today the software company released 11 patches to fix 17 security vulnerabilities in all the Microsoft’s major applications from Windows (including Windows Vista) to Visual Basic and Internet Explores.

Microsoft rated six of the eleven updates as “critical” which means they fix a vulnerability that could be remotely exploited.

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