Windows Longhorn imaginatively named Windows Server 2008
In 100 days after its January launch, nearly 40 million Windows Vista licenses have been sold, announced Bill Gates at the 16th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). The milestone has Microsoft claiming that Windows Vista is the fastest-selling operating system in history.
“As of last week, we've (sold) nearly 40 million copies,” Gates said. “That's twice as fast as the adoption of Windows XP, the last major release we had.”
Of the near 40 million copies of Windows Vista, 78 percent are premium editions that feature advanced features and the Aero user interface.
Gates also revealed that the formerly code-named Windows Server “Longhorn” will be called Windows Server 2008.
Acknowledging that the blandness of name choice for Microsoft’s next server product, Gates joked, “We've been working hard thinking about it. We played around with a couple different ideas, but what we are going to go with is...Windows Server 2008. We know it's a surprise for us to pick something so straightforward.”
Despite Gates’ apparent happiness with having the fastest selling OS yet, things weren’t always rosy at Microsoft when it came to Windows Vista. In February, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that piracy was to blame for the slow initial sales of the new operating system. Then in March, the software company announced that the sale of Windows Vista licenses more than doubled those of Windows XP during its first month of availability.
