Microsoft's chairman opened his presentation by saying Microsoft had sold nearly 40 million copies of Vista in the first 100 days since its release. He said that was twice as fast as the uptake of Windows XP in the same time period. He did not mention, however, the more than a five-year gap between the release of the two operating systems, the largest such gap in Microsoft's history.
Gates spent most of his time looking toward the future of the PC. He said 64-bit computing was well under way. Combined with multi-core processors that enable greater system memory, forthcoming 64-bit applications from Microsoft and other vendors will only get faster, according to Gates.
"We are in the middle of a transition," he said. "Most of what's being sold today in the server space and over the next couple of years, even in the client space, most will have that 64-bit capability really just sitting and available."
