According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft Group Vice President Jim Allchin, the man most directly in charge of Windows XP, said last week that the company is "very happy" with sales of the new OS. Allchin declined to provide specific sales figures, but noted that Microsoft was forced to ship extra copies of XP to certain stores that had immediately sold out in the days following the OS's October 25 debut. Allchin said that Microsoft will release more specific sales figures next month.

"I'm very happy with where we're at, [especially] in the midst of this economy," Allchin said. According to certain industry analysts, however, XP isn't selling quite as well as its consumer-oriented predecessors. NPD Techworld, for example, says that retail sales of XP are lagging behind those of Windows 9x. But XP is outselling previous Windows versions where it counts--bundled with new PCs--sometimes by as much as 200 percent, thanks to better-than-expected PC sales.