[citation][nom]RazberyBandit[/nom]400 million Win7 licenses. OK. More than 200 million PCs still using XP? OK. But, such wording could leave one to believe there are currently twice as many Win7 users as there are XP users. That's not the case.OEMs buy OS licenses in bulk, often by the tens of thousands at once. So, OEMs have purchased enough Win7 licenses to produce 400 million Win7 PCs. That doesn't mean they have made those 400 million PCs, and it certainly doesn't mean they've actually sold them and are in use. PCs sometimes sit on a store shelf for years, unsold. Some retailers may still have unsold XP or Vista machines.The real measure for Win7's adoption would be an account of how many licenses have been activated. Til then, that 400 million number is at best an estimate of it's potential success and adoption.As for the comments regarding business integration of Win7, I know of very few who have bothered to do so. Most still run XP, having also skipped Vista. Why? Because it's poor business sense to constantly fix things that aren't broken. Unless Win8 offers something new that businesses absolutely crave, Win8 may suffer a similar fate.[/citation]
You have a point, but I think it's only relavent if you're looking from a particular perspective. Microsoft was thanking their partners for buying 400 million copies. Articles like these are taking that figure and attempting to journalistically use it as a benchmark of success. Which, from a business standpoint, it is. Even if each license cost OEM's $75-$100 apiece, multiply by 400 million and you could say Microsoft has been successful from a business standpoint with their Windows 7 OS.. Internally, their bosses are high fiving and backslapping and shaking employees hands at their company picnic because they have successfully built and sold many copies and raked in their R&D, labor, advertising costs and profited as well... YOUR real measure as a fan might be about how many copies were activated... however, you're also talking about OEM copies, which I believe are activated by the factories anyways, so most of those probably ARE activated, and just waiting for the end user to "Register" online, although, I don't usually buy pre-manufactured PC's, so I could be wrong about that part... regardless, if you can afford it, you might want to buy Microsoft stock, not sure if you've noticed over the last few decades... but those guys know how to make money...