Windows install base to top 1bn by end of 2008

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has revealed that the software giant is well on its way to reaching one billion Windows users, and he expects to reach that figure by the end of the company's 2008 fiscal year.

"The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach one billion," said Ballmer. "If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year 2008, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept."

The software giant also announced that it had already sold 60 million copies of Windows Vista this year which, according to eWeek, is more than the entire Apple install base.

During Microsoft's annual analyst day, Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told press that he had numbers to prove that Vista was Microsoft's most secure operating system to date.

Turner claimed that "there have been just 12 serious vulnerabilities reported with Vista over the first 180 days versus 25 for Windows XP over the same period." He then later backed up this claim by saying that Microsoft has seen 21 percent fewer support calls for Vista compared to XP in the same period.

So, it all seems rosy for Microsoft, even though some industry bigwigs beg to differ. Can you remember your experiences when you first installed Windows XP when it first came out - were they as good or bad as your early Vista experiences? Discuss in the forums.