Windows Vistaster: The "Ow" Starts Now

Windows Vista may end up being the least-desired best-selling OS in the history of operating systems. New research suggests that more than one in three new Vista PCs is downgraded to Windows XP. Performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software reports that its survey of over 3,000 Vista PCs revealed nearly 35 percent to be running XP. “Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell (DELL) or HP (HPQ), or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine,” Devil Mountain CTO Craig Barth told ComputerWorld. “In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista.”

An interesting data point to consider in light of Microsoft (MSFT) chairman Bill Gates’s claim earlier this year that sales of Windows Vista had reached 140 million copies worldwide. If Devil Mountain’s figures are accurate, Vista’s installed base is likely quite a bit less than that. That revelation is a humbling blow for Microsoft, which has been doing its damnedest to convince consumers that Vista is an OS worth running.