By Tim Ferguson
Tuesday, December 09 2008 11:09 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62049122,00.htm

Windows Vista is making good progress according to Microsoft and users are by and large satisfied with the company's latest operating system.

Referring to Microsoft research, U.K. Windows product manager Laurence Painell told ZDNet Asia sister's site Silicon.com: "We're now seeing that nine out of 10 customers that are using Vista are either satisfied or very satisfied with the experiences that they are having on a regular basis."

Painell added Vista has been the fastest selling Windows OS ever with around 180 million licenses having been sold between its launch at the beginning of 2007 and August this year.

One of the main issues with Vista, particularly for businesses, was the initial lack of compatibility with a significant amount of software and hardware.

Vista now supports more than 77,000 devices and 2,700 software packages, according to Microsoft.

"It's pretty difficult to go into a retailer and find a device that would not work for Windows Vista," Painell said.

Despite this, in a recent Silicon.com CIO Jury, none of the 12 CIOs said they plan to move to Vista.

In October, research by the Corporate IT Forum (Tif) found that more than half of those surveyed were "exploiting" XP compared to just 4 percent for Vista.

The Tif research also found more companies are investigating Vista's successor, Windows 7, than the current OS.

Microsoft's Painell admitted: "Some [businesses] plan to move onto Windows 7 and skip Vista."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said earlier this year he could accept some businesses bypassing Microsoft's latest OS as long as they come back for Windows 7.

Painell said although no firm dates have been announced it's unlikely the first Windows 7 service pack will appear much before 2011, meaning moving to Vista still makes sense.

Microsoft also recently announced a version of Windows that runs over the Internet from inside Microsoft's own data centers, dubbed Azure.

Tim Ferguson of Silicon.com reported from London.