On its face, that's a really good number. For a quick recap, Microsoft announced 20 million units sold in the first month (March 26, 2007), 40 million units sold in the first 100 days (May 15, 2007), more than 60 million licenses sold "as of the summer" of 2007 (Sept. 27, 2007) and 100 million licenses sold in its first year (Jan. 30, 2008). So we're talking 80 million units in the first half of calendar 2008, compared with roughly 50 million in the first half of 2007.

Take away downgrade rights, and I'm not so sure the number is meaningful other than as a measure of Windows' market power in general. But there it is, duly reported.

Ed Bott found the first hints of Microsoft’s campaign. The gist: “At one point, everyone thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows Vista.”

I agree with Ed that the campaign is a good start and it’s also true that Vista SP1 is probably better than its reputation. But–and this is a big “but”–will people want to hear it? How many people are permanently turned off to Vista?

Instead, I will probably be wiping my laptop of the last shreds of Windows Vista and reinstalling Windows XP Professional and trying to find all of the drivers I need to get everything working right again. No, it doesn't sound like a lovely weekend but it isn't like I didn't give Vista a chance.

My laptop actually came with Vista Business Edition pre-installed, so I didn't exactly expect a lot of problems. I had the choice of leaving it as it was or installing my corporate load of XP Pro, but being an early adopter and a beta tester has its advantages when you're in IT for a living. I should "eat some of my own dog food" I thought, assuming I planned to move my company's employees to Vista at some point in their professional lives.

So why should you to choose to step down to Vista ?Lets understand.There are many features that can be compelling for consumers to switch to Vista:

1. Aero Interface: As was debated from long, Windows interface are not so appealing. But ironically, this interface is the most beautiful interface Windows have ever had. This is the cleaner interface with appeasing effects and some bit a clone for Mac’s visual interface and surely shows some good work at Microsoft’s part. It is an eye candy with efficient menus, afresh Start menu, live thumbnails, icons and in built animated effects.

Microsoft’s thriving business and balance sheet is the envy of every business man. Over the past 12 months, the company had sales of $60.42 billion and a profit of $17.68 billion. You just know that the company is ready to expand further: Microsoft’s war chest currently holds more than $23 billion. 

Looking a bit closer at the most recent quarter, the company said that “revenue growth was primarily driven by increased Windows Server and SQL Server revenue, increased licensing of the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista, and increased Xbox 360 platform sales.” The terrible dollar exchange rate also helped to drive up foreign sales: Foreign currency exchange rates accounted for a $542 million or four percentage point increase in revenue during the quarter.

MacDrive supports a wide variety of hardware and storage media, including hard drives CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, floppies, iPods, flash drives, Zip, Jaz, MO, DMG virtual disk files and more. Once installed, Mediafour says, Mac-formatted drives and media work just like their WIndows counterparts.

The upgrade is free to current owners of MacDrive 7, $20 for owners of previous versions. New licenses are available for $50. MacDrive 7 works with Windows XP and Vista with Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. Users of Windows 2000 or 98SE can download MacDrive 6.0, also for $50.

 At about $2,000, the Edge E2250 is no Sunday circular special. Rather, this is a well-equipped system with a bang for the buck that will give you and your family years of high-powered computing. Velocity Micro has an exclusive deal with Best Buy for some of its systems, including this one, so you will see the Edge E2250 at select Best Buy store locations, as well as on BestBuy.com. The system comes in Velocity's standard Signature GX2 case with its aluminum panels and clear plastic side panel.

This situation is a bit unique. Microsoft usually admits that the current version of Windows was junk just as a new version is about to be released. They did a horrible job of handling just about every aspect of the Vista launch, though, so to some extent nobody is going to believe things got better unless Microsoft uses a little honesty. Fortunately, things have gotten better for Vista. Hardware with its ever-troublesome drivers has caught up, and application developers have shed some of the bad programming habits that made them misbehave on Vista.

Yet even with this new Windows-is-great push, Microsoft seems to have stumbled out of the gate. For example, the Windows Vista Compatibility Center was announced on Tuesday. I'd like to tell you what it looks like but as of late Wednesday it still hasn't been launched. The Windows Small Business Assurance Plan site loaded slowly, but at least it existed. There I found out that if you buy Windows Vista Business or Ultimate now, you can get free support from Microsoft--but only through October 2008.

First up is the newly beta-tagged Windows Vista Compatibility Center (WVCC), an online compatibility tool that will help Microsoft figure out what products and services consumers and partners are having trouble running on their copy of Vista. The WVCC will also advise which products (currently there are 77,000 devices and components) Vista supports. At time of publishing, the service was "unavailable." I guess the WVCC is not compatible with my copy of Vista.

Rising Antivirus Software has passed Checkmark Anti-virus Desktop, Checkmark Anti-virus Disinfection and Checkmark Anti-Trojans tests. Tens of antivirus software producers took the test for this certification and among the Chinese vedors; Rising was the only one that passed three tests.

Steven JF He, the Director of Rising Antivirus International Pty Ltd, said that “nearly 90% of computer users choose Microsoft Windows XP as operating system, as recently measured, and a Trojan virus can do ravages to it. Balancing the virus defence in the same time for Microsoft Windows XP operating system and Vista system is one of the top issues in the security industry”.