First the good news--Vista is apparently a hit, with over 88 million copies shipped thus far. Despite the fact that Vista still has to be widely accepted in the enterprise, and news that standalone sales have been well behind those of Windows XP's during the same point in its lifecycle--59.7%, according to NPD Group, during the first six months of sales. That's not really a surprise, given that 80 percent of Mic First the good news–Vista is apparently a hit, with over 88 million copies shipped thus far. Despite the fact that Vista still has to be widely accepted in the enterprise, and news that standalone sales have been well behind those of Windows XP’s during the same point in its lifecycle–59.7%, according to NPD Group, during the first six months of sales. That’s not really a surprise, given that 80 percent of Microsoft’s Windows revenue comes from pre-installed copies on new computers. And given that most systems come with Vista by default now, Vista’s real competition is channel-installed Windows XP. Windows pre-installs rule on the server as well, apparently. Windows’ growth rate is was reportedly higher than that of Linux in 2006, according to IDC, possibly even taking away market share from Linux on new server shipments.It does seem the steam has dropped out of the Linux market a little after the initial Unix-to-Linux migration gold rush, at least from the standpoint of the pre-installed side of the business. But how many copies were erased off the computers they came shipped on and replaced with Windows XP or Linux by IT support teams at business customers? No telling. And since most Linux distros don’t come with a per-seat licensing scheme–and, in fact much of Linux’s success in overseas markets is on older hardware–trying to line up Linux and Windows market statistics is an apples-to-wombats comparison. Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business