Vista Second-Guessing

Although wide-scale deployment of Vista by large businesses is not expected until 2008, the consumer version will sell quickly, since most PC companies will preinstall it on new computers.

Over the weekend, Dell(DELL Quote) started taking orders for PCs with Vista for delivery beginning Tuesday. Kevin Rollins, Dell's chief executive, said the company's Web site saw a 20% jump in traffic and that "tens of thousands of copies" of Vista were sold, according to the Associated Press.

Vista retails for $100 to $400, depending on the version, a bump from earlier versions of Windows, and a price that will help the company's margins.

Wall Street has awaited Vista for some time and the company's solid second quarter provided some evidence that initial sales have been strong. Deferred revenue, a key metric, came in at $1.64 billion, above the company's earlier guidance of $1.5 billion, largely because the company offered customers coupons that will allow them to upgrade to new versions of Office and Windows when the products are generally available.