Against all odds, Microsoft reports that the number of sold Vista copies keeps going up. What would they do without their strong position on the OEM market? Well, that's a question I always ask myself, when a new operating system from Microsoft comes up and it doesn't deliver exactly what was promised, but let's leave my opinion aside and check the numbers, shall we?


At the end of the spring, Bill Gates was saying that Vista almost reached the 40,000,000 mark, but since then, more than 5 months have passed. Considering the fact that Vista was officially released at the end of January, this means that the sales kept a steady pace, with about 13,000,000 copies sold per month.

I am not a market analyst, so I won't give you accurate numbers, but the whole idea is that Vista didn't suffer any problems in terms of sales, despite all the issues had by the operating system itself, like the lack of drivers for lots of devices, pretty high system requirements or the annoying User Account Control.

While Halo 3 also had very strong sales ($330 million), Microsoft claims that Vista helped them beat the Wall Street's expectations, as well as to raise the financial projections for the remaining part of the year. With 40 million copies in the first 100 days, as I said earlier, 60 in late July, and over 88 million copies sold by this Thursday, things look good for Vista, but it's going to be a very interesting Holiday season, now that Apple's Leopard is also in the ring...

Exactly one day ago, Apple finally released Leopard, making Mac OS X the most advanced operating system for desktop users. I know that some people may say this is not true, but this is my opinion, and I'm always open for discussions. Today, we shall check some screenshots and last-minute news about this new operating system, so fasten your seat belts and prepare for a short and thrilling ride!


First of all, I will tell you about Leopard's last-minute issue... While Vista lost its new file system somewhere along the way, Apple was already advertising the ability to use the backup software called Time Machine with wireless AirPort Disks, and suddenly all references to this feature were removed from their site.

Problems that appeared just before the official release of the operating system made Apple pull back the support for wireless backup from Leopard, so you won't get it now, but there's still a great Time Machine to use for your backup tasks...

Obviously, since a lot of users have bought AirPort Disks especially to use this feature, I don't see any other solution for Apple than to add support for this device as soon as possible, in the shape of a software update.

Since yesterday I told you about the new Dock and the Stacks feature, today I'll reveal one more feature of the Leopard - the new Finder. Probably some were expecting this, but I didn't, to be honest. iTunes turned into a new Finder, since this new tool uses iTunes' style, and also comes with a Cover Flow view that was first introduced in iTunes a year ago.

These being said, today's story about Leopard is over, but we'll talk about it again and again in the coming weeks, be sure about it. For now, it's too early to talk about its effect on the market, but in the long run, I'm dying to see how the battle between Vista and Leopard is turning out...

As it happens always with changes in an interface, some people are crazy about Vista's new looks, while others would like to keep at least parts of what they're used to. For example, most people like the Aero interface, but not so many enjoy the new Start menu.

Of course that if you switch back to the Classic Windows theme, you're going to lose all those shiny, rounded and transparent windows, and we don't want that, so let's make a compromise - what about changing only the looks of the Start menu? Here it goes...


- Right click the Start Orb, then choose Properties from the menu that appears.

- In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window, select Classic Start menu in the Start Menu tab .

- Click Apply before closing the window, and the changes will be applied in an instant.

- Enjoy your classic Start menu inside the Aero interface!

If you think the new one looks better, after all, simply go through the same steps again, but select Start Menu instead of Classic Start menu in the second step mentioned above. Good luck!